


Girl-face

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2011-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-20 02:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 1 fic written for this prompt: I want Sam to give Dean something before he leaves for Stanford. And I want Dean to wear it forever and for Sam to be pleased when he sees it after they’re reunited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl-face

  
_The problem with seeing something every day is you don't really see it._   


Dean had found a thin leather band down the side of the front seat of the Impala a few weeks after Sam took off for Stanford. It was Sam's — some girl had given it to him, some dumb teenage thing — and like the geek he was, he'd worn it around his neck for ages, and been as pissy as hell when he lost it.

Dean had been wearing it himself for nearly four years straight when he felt Sam's eyes resting heavy on his wrist.

His slid his own eyes away from the road for a moment and saw what he never really saw anymore, the worn strip of black leather winding around his wrist, the tiny black bead sitting over the bone. He coughed a bit, felt heat in his face, and ramped up the Motorhead — but Sam's eyes still burned into his wrist — so he dragged his take-charge voice out of his throat to ask him if he was hungry, or needed to piss, or if they could just get on with going where they were going. Sam clamped his mouth shut, so Dean braced his hands on the wheel and turned onto the interstate away from Palo Alto, and everything else Sam ever cared about.

One hundred miles later Sam was asleep. One of his stupid long legs was folded up against the door, the other falling open on the seat, and his bitch face was squashed into the vinyl ledge under the window. When Sam started shaking and muttering, _Jess, Jess,_ Dean shook him awake. He sat up white-faced, his Adam's apple convulsing as he gulped for breath. When Sam was calm again — all his emotions packed safely back into that huge head — Dean saw him eying his wrist. He'd slid the band as far up his arm as it would go, hiding it under his frayed cuff.

Dean had never bothered offering himself any kind of explanation as to why, after he'd found Sam's band, he'd got the next friendly woman he slept with to tie it around his wrist and never taken it off. Dad had never noticed. He'd be damned if he'd explain it to Sam.

~

In the urinal of the next gas station Dean tried to get the thing off, but he couldn't undo the knot one handed, and he'd left his knife in the car.

Sam never said a word about it, either then or later when he began forgetting to push it up his arm under his sleeve, or when he slept in a t-shirt, or when he came out of the shower in a towel and couldn't hide it at all.

~

They didn't exactly do any of the things a conventional family might do when a kid got a full ride to Stanford. There was no farewell dinner at a fancy restaurant. No proud speeches. No acknowledgement of the goddamned hard work and commitment Sam had demonstrated by getting in. Nothing like that. Only Sam waiting until just before he had to leave to even tell them he was going. Sam knowing he had no choice but to have his escape planned out in advance. Dean having to put all his energy into stopping the shouting match; into stopping their mutual rage turning into an out and out fistfight, which John was sure to win.

Dean held John against the wall with all his strength until Sam could get out of the room, grabbing his duffel and his sneakers and running off into the chill night air in just sweatpants and a t-shirt. When the door slammed after Sam, John shoved Dean off, his face like a storm. Dean backed towards the door, but John ignored him and sat on the bed, his face in his hands, the air around him choked with anger.

Dean put the door between them just to be safe. He waited all night for Sam to come back, sitting on the cracked concrete step outside their shitty motel room.

At dawn he gave up, and walked stiffly down the road to the 7-Eleven to get coffee. He passed a bus station he'd failed to notice in the whole week they'd been staying in this literally godforsaken hole of a town. There were a few people sprawled half asleep on the benches, but not Sam.

Back in the dark motel room John was asleep. Dean put one coffee on the nightstand next to him and took the other into the bathroom to shave. He propped it on the toilet cistern and got his razor out. Hidden under his can of shaving cream was an envelope. He picked it up and felt it. There was a letter inside, and the small hard lump of something else.

John knocked on the door. "We're leaving in an hour. Get packed when you're done."

Dean put the letter aside and flicked on the cold light above the mirror. "Yes sir." Even to himself he looked like shit.

He carried the letter in his back pocket for a while, until John stopped radiating anger and calmed down, until they'd wasted another evil bastard, and until they'd moved on again to another town, another job. He kept meaning to open it, till one night he was salting and burning some sorry ghost's bones — his back and arms killing him from digging open a whole grave by himself for the first time — and on impulse he dropped the letter in right after the flare of the match.

The next day he cleaned six months worth of crap out of the Impala, found Sam's girl-faced necklace, and ended up compromising his manliness forever.

~

Back when Sam was at Stanford Dad never mentioned his name, but Dean knew where he went when he disappeared for a couple of days every few months in between jobs. He'd get a pinched look on his face, of tension or fear or uncertainty, and then he'd go and come back with it gone, his face clear, and the only thought on his mind the next thing to hunt.

When Dean finally asked Sam if he'd called Dad it was two months after the faith healer deal. He was fine, and Sam was fine, and he'd survived against all the odds — thanks to Sam. For a long time he couldn't bring himself to ask; he was afraid of the answer. He'd lain in his hospital bed preparing speeches for Sam, forcing himself to be a man about dying, and holding onto the knowledge that Sam would call Dad and Dad would come.

Sam must have stayed with him all night after he bought him in. He remembered firing at the rawhide that had taken those children. Pain had flashed across his skull, light exploding everywhere, and he woke up on the other side to find Sam holding his hand. Sam had dropped it straight away of course, and gone off to find the doctors, but he couldn't hide the tears in his eyes when he came back later and told Dean he wasn't going to let him die.

Dean had tried to tell himself, when Dad didn't come, that his little brother — who'd _left_ for fucks sake — had just, for reasons best known to himself, not called Dad. Not told him. Sam had _left_ , and to Sam he was just an annoying big brother who made him do things he'd much rather not do, face things he'd much rather not face. Sam couldn't possibly care more about him than Dad did, because Sam didn't really care that much about him, no matter what he said.

 _I just wanna be a person again when this is all over_ , Sam said. Like being with Dean was only being half alive.

~

They rescued each other as a matter of course. Back and forth and back and forth, and the debt between them growing all the time. Dean's heart pounded with relief when Sam showed up in that disturbingly pretty orchard — he and the cute girl were this close to dying — and man, he had _nothing_. His heart pounded with relief but he wasn't really surprised. He was just glad that Sam had ignored his heartfelt speeches over the cell about how he understood Sam needed to go his own way, go off and find Dad, Jessica's killer — because, fuck no, he didn't understand.

And Sam's almost calm Dean when Dean turned up in that frankly over art-directed barn that looked like it'd come from the set of _Deliverance_ , or _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ , to rescue him and the mouthy cop. Not that Sam didn't have to rescue him right back after he got jumped by that grubby girl with the truly nasty personality — now she'd be interesting when she grew up. But shit, Dean would be more shocked if Sam didn't rescue him. He'd be more shocked if one day he actually did bleed to death in the lair of some disgusting creature, waiting for Sam, and Sam didn't come.

~

The weird thing was that Sam still seemed to believe some of the shit Dean spun about himself. He still seemed to get blinded by the front. The way he had that cheesy grin on his face the whole time they were around Cassie, like he couldn't believe it, like it was the coolest thing in the world that Dean liked a woman, _really_ liked a woman. He spent all his time grinning like there was some secret joke, like he was just so happy that Dean had finally lost his heart to someone.

 _I like her_ , he'd said, like a girl-faced twat, as they drove away. Never guessing for a minute that it wasn't up to Dean. Never guessing for a minute that it wasn't about whether Dean wanted to stay in touch with her, or whether Dean wanted something a bit more permanent, someone to visit, care about. Never guessing that it wasn't just about whether Dean could stop fucking other women — which, yeah — he damn well almost certainly could.

 _I'm a realist_ , Dean, she'd said, pushing her sweet hips into his hands, looking up at him like he didn't get it.

Yeah, he got it all right. Everyone was a realist when it came to him.

~

Sam had got halfway back to the car, a twisted look of regret on his face, and then stopped. He half-turned back, and then stopped again, and then he was striding up to those big doors like he thought he was Richard Gere in _An Officer and a Gentleman_. Not that Dean had ever actually seen such a shameless chick flick of course — he was just guessing.

Dean stood there, watching the look on Sarah's face as she opened the door and saw Sam. Sam scooped her in and pressed his hips to hers and cupped her face in his hands. Dean thought Sam got more passion out of one goodbye kiss than he got out of whole one-night stands. It hurt a bit to watch, knowing Sam would resent him for dragging him away from something so good, seeing the careful way Sam cradled her head, so after a while he got in the car and looked the other way.

~

Dean forgot stuff sometimes. He forgot that Sam's ability to move stuff with the power of his freak mind had started when he thought Dean was about to die. He forgot that Sam had been unable to even fake caring that that beautiful woman with the brain tumor was going to die instead of Dean. He forgot that when Sam wasn't bitching about his fate he kind of seemed to enjoy hanging out with Dean — how sometimes his stupid big face would break wide open with a grin that was all and only for him.

~

When Dad came back it felt weird to Dean how the lines between them had shifted. How suddenly it was the more the thought of Sammy dying that made his fists itch and his stomach clench. How he knew that if one of them had to die he couldn't bear to choose, but if he had to, he'd choose himself first, and after that his dad.

~

They sped away from the demon and for once Sam drove like a bat out of hell. Dean's arms and chest were sticky with his heart's blood, Sam's face was a mess, and Dad was wired on adrenalin and the aftershock of possession. Dean spun the leather band around and around his bloody wrist, listening to Dad and Sam in the front seat arguing, always arguing.

Outside the car the night was full of evil, full of intent.

Dad said there was nothing more important than killing the demon, but Sam shook his head, and for a second his eyes met Dean's in the rearview mirror.

Dean felt a tiny bit of warmth through the pain that racked his chest, and a few seconds after that, the truck hit.

~

The problem with seeing something every day is you don't really see it.

Sam got sick of waiting for Dean on a stuffy autumn day at half-past-four in the afternoon somewhere near Sulphur, Oklahoma. Dad had disappeared again, but Sam was sitting hunched over on the passenger side of the re-built Impala. He reached over and put his fingers on Dean's wrist, over the ridge in the soft cotton of his shirt that betrayed the thin leather band. He rubbed his index finger over the tiny lump of the bead. He said _Dean_ the way he used to say Jess's name in his nightmares.

Dean pulled over under some trees and turned the engine off. He sat with his hands on the wheel for a full minute, just breathing, with Sam still touching his wrist. Then he shut his eyes and reached, and Sam was there, Sam was all around him. Bigger than Dean, and solid, smelling of cheap cologne, and dried blood, and sweat. Dean pushed blindly into Sam's neck and grazed his jaw with his knuckles. Sam twisted on the seat and wrapped both arms awkwardly around him. Outside, Dean could hear wind stripping the leaves off the trees above the Impala, could hear the soft patter they made falling on the roof. Inside the car, his heart beat against Sam's chest, and the strong pulse in Sam's neck tapped time into his forehead.

Dean knew this wasn't really the answer. It wouldn't be _DeanandSam_ forever. He knew he'd end up fucking some gorgeous woman a couple of states over. He knew he'd mostly do it to lessen the hurt of Sam falling for a sweet girl with a sad story two states after that. He knew if they survived what was coming, Sam would walk away, and he would force himself to smile, and say _dude, don't be a stranger_ , and watch him go.

But for now he raised his head, and Sam dipped down, and his mouth tasted sweeter than anything.

~

Later on, Sam wanted his chick flick moment, of course. He was mouthing something dirty into Dean's chest when he flicked his hair out of his face and grabbed Dean's wrist.

"I can't believe you're still wearing it, man," he said in his usual I-don't-care-how-much-this-embarrasses-you-I'm-going-to-say-it-anyway voice. "I mean, I figured if anything, you'd just burn my letter."

Dean thought, _but I did burn it_. He wanted to say, with the appropriate amount of sarcasm, _hold me_. But all that came out was a croak and he tried to snatch his offending wrist away from Sam's giant paw.

Sam put all his weight on him and held him down, all shining eyes and teeth and crazy grin.

"You like me…" he drawled. "You thought about me…"

Dean kneed him — gently — in the groin, and flipped him on his back.

"Fuck you, baby brother," he said, and put Sam's head in a lock and kissed him.

Once Sam could breathe again, he said, "You know how I knew what to give you?"

"What the fuck are you on about? Shut up!"

"Shut up?" said Sam, grinning. "Seriously — shut up? That's all you've got?"

But later again, when the sun had died and the flocked 70's wallpaper in their cheap room had faded from yellow and brown and orange to grey, Sam said quietly, "I knew what to get you because before I lost mine, I used to catch you staring at it all the time."

Dean looked over at Sam's huge body lying next to him on the bed. His eyes flicked to the thick column of Sam's throat, and an image flashed through his mind. Seventeen-year-old Sam — brown skinned, with light in his eyes and sun bouncing off his face, and a thin leather band strung around his neck, a tiny black bead resting over his throat. He'd been laughing and standing at the back of Dad's truck loading rock-salt into the guns, and Dean remembered laughing with him and feeling good, like they could go on forever.  



End file.
